Tag Archives: cassette club

When I started this little label, I had two firm ideas what I wanted to achieve with it. 1: Release bands that I love. 2: Release those bands on the format I love, tapes. As long as I stick to those rules I know magical things can happen, because when has blindly doing something for love without fear of consequence ever got anyone into trouble? Never right? So here I am, with my 50th release and its a goddamn monster. It’s a re-release of what’s considered one of the best albums by THE GODFATHER OF CASSETTES himself, R. STEVIE MOORE… 1987’s‘TEENAGE SPECTACULAR’!

RSM is a true inspiration and a stone cold legend in both music and cassette culture; releasing over 400 albums on myriad formats, since 1968, establishing the CASSETTE CLUB (a proto-POST/POP!) releasing his albums via mail order, directly to fans (which included massive RSM fan, Ariel Pink) and furthering the appeal of tapes to many.

The intimacy of the artist, recording an album at home, duplicating it onto a tape, putting that into an envelope and sending it to a fan is as rare as a decent sounding mp3. That connection with the artist adds so many more layers to the music when you are holding a tangible rectangle of hard work and love in your adoring hands. The xmas-like act of opening the case, your first touch of the plastic as you turn the tape to side A, the placing of the tape into a Walkman, the sound of the closing of the door, the click when you press play, the slight hiss as you wait a second for the first song to start, the pulling out of the j-card and unfurling with both sweaty hands, your eyes darting for information across the j-card as you listen to the music, making connections between words and sounds and images and feelings… this is why tapes will never die. This is why bands and artists will always want to emulate something that RSM has been doing since the 60s. If you want to make your music mean something to fans – besides disposable chewing gum pop – you give them all those feelings above, with the knowledge that a true music fan will appreciate that you went to the effort.

I am very happy that POST/POP has a little part to play in the epic saga that is the musical career of one of the most influential and important musicians in alt-music. All hail R. Stevie Moore!

You can buy ‘Teenage Spectacular’ on cassette from Friday, August 26th 2016 by clicking on this sentence!

If you want to buy the digital, please go to RSM’s bandcamp and buy it from there, where you can find all of his albums at reasonable prices. I hope to release more tapes with RSM, so if you’re a fan and never seen POST/POP before, keep checking back or sign up to the mailing list over there on the right.

I have thought about setting up a POST/POP subscription service for almost the entire life of this label. When dealing with limited edition records, and the busy 21st century lifestyle of the modern day music fan, you will inevitably miss out on a release. There is nothing worse than making a mental note to buy a record on preorder, forgetting and then realising its sold out. Ebay is ruthless and punching your knee to inflict pain for the lapse will not bring that record back. I posited the idea to some of my regular customers, and it was met with an almighty “YES!!!” It’s a way to take the admin out of buying the stuff and a hefty financial saving too!